The French school of theoretical biology has been mainly initiated in Poitiers during the sixties by scientists like J. Besson, G. Bouligand, P. Gavaudan, M. P. Schützenberger and R. Thom, launching many new research domains on the fractal dimension, the combinatorial properties of the genetic code and related amino-acids as well as on the genetic regulation of the biological processes. Presently, the biological science knows that RNA molecules are often involved in the regulation of complex genetic networks as effectors, (...) e.g., activators, inhibitors or hybrids. Examples of such networks will be given showing that there exist RNA “relics” that have played an important role during evolution and have survived in many genomes, whose probability distribution of their sub-sequences is quantified by the Shannon entropy, and the robustness of the dynamics of the networks they regulate can be characterized by the Kolmogorov–Sinaï dynamic entropy and attractor entropy. (shrink)

Long before Luc Besson shot Fifth Element (1997) in English, and long before the squabble over whether Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement [2004]) was really a French film or a Warner Brothers’ film, the “national” in French national cinema was complicated. And yet a quick glance at the course offerings of most film departments will tell us that the discipline of Film Studies persists in employing a national cinema model when conceptualizing non-Hollywood (...) cinema. In fact, French cinema has been global from its inception, if we think of globalization as the “increasing speed, ease, and extent with which capital, goods, services, technologies, people, cultures, information.. (shrink)

It is disputed what norm, if any, governs assertion. We address this question by looking at assertions of future contingents: statements about the future that are neither metaphysically necessary nor metaphysically impossible. Many philosophers think that future contingents are not truth apt, which together with a Truth Norm or a Knowledge Norm of assertion implies that assertions of these future contingents are systematically infelicitous. In this article, we argue that our practice of asserting future contingents is incompatible with the view (...) that they are not truth apt. We consider a range of norms of assertion and argue that the best explanation of the data is provided by the view that assertion is governed by the Knowledge Norm. (shrink)

Driven by technological innovations, newborn screening (NBS) panels have been expanded and the development of genomic NBS pilot programs is rapidly progressing. Decisions on disease selection for NBS are still based on the Wilson and Jungner (WJ) criteria published in 1968. Despite this uniform reference, interpretation of the WJ criteria and actual disease selection for NBS programs are highly variable. A systematic literature search [PubMED search “Wilson” AND “Jungner”; last search 16.07.22] was performed to evaluate the applicability of the WJ (...) criteria for current and future NBS programs and the need for adaptation. By at least two reviewers, 105 publications (systematic literature search, N = 77; manual search, N = 28) were screened for relevant content and, finally, 38 publications were evaluated. Limited by the study design of qualitative text analysis, no statistical evaluation was performed, but a structured collection of reported aspects of criticism and proposed improvements was instead collated. This revealed a set of general limitations of the WJ criteria, such as imprecise terminology, lack of measurability and objectivity, missing pediatric focus, and absent guidance on program management. Furthermore, it unraveled specific aspects of criticism on clinical, diagnostic, therapeutic, and economical aspects. A major obstacle was found to be the incompletely understood natural history and phenotypic diversity of rare diseases prior to NBS implementation, resulting in uncertainty about case definition, risk stratification, and indications for treatment. This gap could be closed through the systematic collection and evaluation of real-world evidence on the quality, safety, and (cost-)effectiveness of NBS, as well as the long-term benefits experienced by screened individuals. An integrated NBS public health program that is designed to continuously learn would fulfil these requirements, and a multi-dimensional framework for future NBS programs integrating medical, ethical, legal, and societal perspectives is overdue. (shrink)

The other contributions address philosophical problems arising in specific domains of international law, such as human rights law, international economic law,...

This paper concerns connection between knowing or accepting a logical principle such as Modus Ponens and actions of reasoning involving it. Discussions of this connection typically mention the so-called ‘Lewis Carroll Regress’ and there is near consensus that the regress shows something important about it. Also, although the regress explicitly concerns logic, many philosophers think that it establishes a more general truth, about the structurally similar connection between epistemic or practical principles and actions involving them. This paper’s first aim is (...) to address key interpretations Carroll’s regress as clearly as possible so as to show precisely how it might be relevant to questions concerning the connection between logical knowledge and reasoning, and, more broadly, to discussions of how epistemic or practical principles may be action-guiding. Its second aim is to show that the regress fails to establish anything of substance about the connection between logical knowledge and reasoning, or any other structurally similar relation, unless substantive, contentious and typically undefended assumptions are made. The consensus is thus on shaky ground. (shrink)

I address a type of circularity threat that arises for the view that we employ general basic logical principles in deductive reasoning. This type of threat has been used to argue that whatever knowing such principles is, it cannot be a fully cognitive or propositional state, otherwise deductive reasoning would not be possible. I look at two versions of the circularity threat and answer them in a way that both challenges the view that we need to apply general logical principles (...) in deductive reasoning and defuses the threat to a cognitivist account of knowing basic logical principles. (shrink)

This book explores the relationship between the law and pervasive and persistent reasonable disagreement about justice. It reveals the central moral function and creative force of reasonable disagreement in and about the law and shows why and how lawyers and legal philosophers should take reasonable conflict more seriously. Even though the law should be regarded as the primary mode of settlement of our moral conflicts,it can, and should, also be the object and the forum of further moral conflicts. There is (...) more to the rule of law than convergence and determinacy and it is important therefore to question the importance of agreement in law and politics. By addressing in detail issues pertaining to the nature and sources of disagreement, its extent and significance, as well as the procedural, institutional and substantive responses to disagreement in the law and their legitimacy, this book suggests the value of a comprehensive approach to thinking about conflict, which until recently has been analysed in a compartmentalized way. It aims to provide a fully-fledged political morality of conflict by drawing on the analysis of topical jurisprudential questions in the new light of disagreement. Developing such a global theory of disagreement in the law should be read in the context of the broader effort of reconstructing a complete account of democratic law-making in pluralistic societies. The book will be of value not only to legal philosophers and constitutional theorists, but also to political and democratic theorists, as well as to all those interested in public decision-making in conditions of conflict. (shrink)

This paper argues that the prominent accounts of logical knowledge have the consequence that they conflict with ordinary reasoning. On these accounts knowing a logical principle, for instance, is having a disposition to infer according to it. These accounts in particular conflict with so-called ‘reasoned change in view’, where someone does not infer according to a logical principle but revise their views instead. The paper also outlines a propositional account of logical knowledge which does not conflict with ordinary reasoning.

This paper considers the problem of assigning meanings to empty natural kind terms. It does so in the context of the Twin-Earth externalist-internalist debate about whether the meanings of natural kind terms are individuated by the external physical environment of the speakers using these terms. The paper clarifies and outlines the different ways in which meanings could be assigned to empty natural kind terms. And it argues that externalists do not have the semantic resources to assign them meanings. The paper (...) ends on a sceptical note concerning the fruitfulness of using the Twin-Earth setting in debates about the semantics of empty natural kind terms. (shrink)

In this paper, I address a key argument in favour of logical expressivism, the view that knowing a logical principle such as Modus Ponens is not a cognitive state but a pro-attitude towards drawing certain types of conclusions from certain types of premises. The argument is that logical expressivism is the only view that can take us out of Lewis Carroll's Regress – which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning is impossible. I show that the argument does not hold scrutiny and (...) that logical cognitivism can be vindicated. In the course of the discussion, I draw substantially on a comparison with a similar argument in meta-ethics, for moral expressivism. (shrink)

This article addresses the identity of the legitimate actors of international law-making from the perspective of democratic theory. It argues that both states or state-based international organisations, and civil society actors should be considered complementary legitimate actors of international law-making. Unlike previous accounts, our proposed model of representation, the Multiple Representation Model, is based on an expanded, democratic understanding of the principle of state participation: it is specifically designed to palliate the democratic deficits of more common versions of the Principle (...) of State Consent. Second, it endorses a qualified version of the Principle of Civil Society Participation, one that is much more restrictive and more critical of the democratic defects of civil society actors than most of its current supporters. Finally, it reveals how the democratic strengths and deficits of both models are best approached as mirroring one another and need to be combined in a complex ac... (shrink)

This paper considers the question of what knowing a logical rule consists in. I defend the view that knowing a logical rule is having propositional knowledge. Many philosophers reject this view and argue for the alternative view that knowing a logical rule is, at least at the fundamental level, having a disposition to infer according to it. To motivate this dispositionalist view, its defenders often appeal to Carroll’s regress argument in ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’. I show that this (...) dispositionalist view, and the regress that supposedly motivates it, operate with the wrong picture of what is involved in knowing a logical rule. In particular I show that it gives us the wrong picture of the relation between knowing a logical rule and actions of inferring according to it, as well as of the way in which knowing a logical rule might be a priori. (shrink)

John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: assertions about the future that express propositions that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and aims to solve the puzzle, his truth relativism is not apt to solve the problem of future contingents. We argue that (...) the theory fails to vindicate the intuition that future contingent propositions are neither true nor false, leaving the theory open to a charge of Reductio. We show that these problems cannot be answered while preserving the core tenets of truth relativism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show what sorts of logics are required by externalist and internalist accounts of the meanings of natural kind nouns. These logics give us a new perspective from which to evaluate the respective positions in the externalist--internalist debate about the meanings of such nouns. The two main claims of the paper are the following: first, that adequate logics for internalism and externalism about natural kind nouns are second-order logics; second, that an internalist second-order logic (...) is a free logic—a second order logic free of existential commitments for natural kind nouns, while an externalist second-order logic is not free of existential commitments for natural kind nouns—it is existentially committed. (shrink)

Interest in republicanism as a political theory has burgeoned in recent years, but its implications for the understanding of law have remained largely unexplored. Legal Republicanism is the first book to offer a comprehensive, critical survey of the potential for creating republican accounts of fundamental issues in law and legal theory.

Knowledge of the basic rules of logic is often thought to be distinctive, for it seems to be a case of non-inferential a priori knowledge. Many philosophers take its source to be different from those of other types of knowledge, such as knowledge of empirical facts. The most prominent account of knowledge of the basic rules of logic takes this source to be the understanding of logical expressions or concepts. On this account, what explains why such knowledge is distinctive is (...) that it is grounded in semantic or conceptual understanding. However, I show that this cannot be the correct account of knowledge of the basic rules of logic, because it is open to Gettier-style counter-examples. (shrink)

:Recent years have seen an increase of interest on the part of human rights theorists in the “supply-side” of human rights, i.e., in the duties or obligations correlative to human rights. Nevertheless, faced with the practically urgent and seemingly simple question of who owes the duties related to international human rights, few human rights theorists provide an elaborate answer. While some make a point of fitting the human rights practice and hence regard states as the sole human rights duty-bearers merely (...) by referring to that practice, others criticize the “state-centric” approach to human rights duty-bearers and expand the scope of the latter to include any international institution beyond the state and even private actors. Curiously, however, even those more expansive accounts of human rights duty-bearers are usually very evasive about why it should be so and especially how it should work. The time has come to broach anew the issue of the bearers of human rights duties, and responsibilities of international institutions in human rights theory, addressing two challenges: focusing on relational and directed human rights duties specifically and not on duties of global justice in general, thereby distinguishing between human rights duty-bearers and other bearers of responsibilities for human rights, on the one hand, and accounting for and justifying the point of international human rights law and practice in this respect, thereby also securing internal arguments for reform, on the other. The essay’s argument is four-pronged. It starts with a few reminders about the relational nature of human rights and the relationship between human rights and duties and what this means for the specification of human rights duties. It then focuses more specifically on the identification of human rights duty-bearers, i.e., states and international institutions of jurisdiction like the European Union, and the allocation of human rights duties to them. The third section of the article is devoted to the concurrent moral responsibilities for human rights that are incurred by other various responsibility-bearers outside institutions of jurisdiction. In the final section, the essay considers the revolution potential of the EU’s fast-developing human rights’ duties, and discusses the normative implications of the development of universal international institutions’ human rights duties stricto sensu for international law and politics more generally. (shrink)

Newborn screening (NBS) is an effective measure of secondary prevention. The application of genomic sequencing in population-based screening would enable further expansions of the NBS disease panel and a genomic NBS (gNBS). The selection of NBS target diseases is still based on the Wilson and Jungner screening principles from 1968, which are considered incomplete, particularly for an extension towards gNBS. The present work aims to establish a multi-dimensional framework for future gNBS programs. An interdisciplinary expert panel comprising researchers from pediatric (...) and adolescent medicine, human genetics, ethics, medical psychology, law, and patient representatives used a nominal group technique-like multi-stage consensus process to define criteria for gNBS, considering ethical, legal, and social implications, medical aspects, and patient perspectives. Overall, 18 criteria were developed, clustered into four subcategories: I. Clinical criteria (characteristics of the target disease); II. Diagnostic criteria (requirements of the test); III. Therapeutic-interventional criteria (prerequisites of the intervention); IV. Program management criteria (requirements of the program). Subcategories I–III define selection criteria for target diseases, subcategory IV defines criteria for how to establish and manage the program. In conclusion, this multi-dimensional framework serves as a well-balanced basis for developing thoroughly revised and internationally accepted consensus screening criteria. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Essentialism--roughly, the view that natural kinds have discrete essences, generating truths that are necessary but knowable only a posteriori--is an increasingly popular view in the metaphysics of science. At the same time, philosophers of language have been subjecting Kripke’s views about the existence and scope of the necessary a posteriori to rigorous analysis and criticism. Essentialists typically appeal to Kripkean semantics to motivate their radical extension of the realm of the necessary a posteriori; but they rarely attempt to (...) provide any semantic arguments for this extension, or engage with the critical work being done by philosophers of language. This collection brings authors on both sides together in one volume, thus helping the reader to see the connections between views in philosophy of language on the one hand and the metaphysics of science on the other. The result is a book that will have a significant impact on the debate about essentialism, encouraging essentialists to engage with debates about the semantic presuppositions that underpin their position, and, encouraging philosophers of language to engage with the metaphysical presuppositions enshrined in Kripkean semantics. (shrink)

Research indicates that nature offers many physical and mental health benefits, including restoration – or recovery from mental fatigue. However, questions remain about what exactly in one's environment is experienced as restorative and why. Bridging environmental aesthetics, environmental psychology and cultural studies, this study establishes a connection between landscape and mindscape as seen, for instance, in the ways in which an orderly environment is interpreted as an orderly state of mind and vice versa. Using data drawn from a qualitative survey (...) targeting expatriate Finns, the article mobilises content analysis to interpret the results and concludes that a ‘favourite place’ is aesthetically appealing, enables actions that are experienced as restorative and is as much an interpretation of a space as a physical place. (shrink)

International law’s legitimacy has come under serious attack lately, including, and maybe even more so, in regimes considered democratic. Reading Dworkin’s New Philosophy for International Law in the current context is a timely reminder of the centrality of the political legitimacy of international law. Interestingly, indeed, his account does not succumb to the (however progressive) cosmopolitan ideal of an international political community. Nor is it reducible to a concern for domestic justice in which political legitimacy is only self-regarding. By revisiting (...) seventeenth century international legal theories, Dworkin sends both cosmopolitans and statists back-to-back. He (re-)discovers a third way in which to conceive of statehood today: not on its own, but in a mirror-image fashion and against the background of the international institutional order without which there would be no equal sovereign States, but no individual equality either. Carrying Dworkin’s argument forward, this article identifies and discusses three of its crucial contributions with respect to the objects, subjects and institutions of international legitimacy that deserve further attention. It concludes with different proposals regarding the design and organization of other international institutions than States, both public and private, by reference to their relationship to States (and their people). According to Dworkin, this should enable us to improve not only the legitimacy of the international institutional order as whole, but also the political legitimacy of each State therein since both are mutually related. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that understanding a logical constant (e.g. ‘if, then’) fundamentally consists in having dispositions to infer according to the logical rules (e.g. Modus Ponens) that fix its meaning. This paper argues that such dispositionalist accounts give us the wrong picture of what understanding a logical constant consists in. The objection here is that they give an account of understanding a logical constant which is inconsistent with what seem to be adequate manifestations of such understanding. I then outline an (...) alternative account according to which understanding a logical constant is not to be understood dispositionally, but propositionally. I argue that this account is not inconsistent with intuitively correct manifestations of understanding the logical constants. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Gilbert Ryle’s claim that ordinary competence with logical principles or rules is a kind of knowing how, where such knowledge is understood as a skill, a multi-track disposition. Ryle argues that his account of ordinary logical competence helps avoid Lewis Carroll’s famous regress argument (Carroll 1895), which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning might be impossible. Indeed, Carroll’s regress is the central motivation for Ryle’s account. I argue that this account is inadequate on two counts: it (...) cannot serve to articulate the way ordinary reasoners might exercise their knowledge in reasoning and it does not do much to help us avoid Carroll’s regress. I sketch an alternative view, still Rylean in spirit, that fares better on both counts. (shrink)

Human rights and democracy have been regarded as a mutually reinforcing couple by many political theorists to date. The internationalisation of human rights post-1945 is often said to have severed those links, however. Accounting for the legitimacy of international human rights requires exploring how human rights and democracy, once they have been decoupled or disconnected, can be recoupled or reunited across governance levels and maybe even at the same governance level albeit beyond the state. The article does so in three (...) steps. The first prong of the argument is dedicated to presenting the moral-political nature of human rights and their relationship to political equality and, hence, their inherent legal nature from a democratic theory perspective. The second section of the article then draws some implications for the domestic or international levels of legal recognition and specification of human rights by reference to their legitimation within the domestic democratic community. It explains the mutual relationship between human rights and citizens’ rights and where international human rights draw their democratic legitimacy from. In the third and final section, the author discusses potential changes in the nature and legitimacy of international human rights once political structures beyond the state become more democratic, and human rights and democracy are being recoupled again at various levels of governance. The European Union being one of the most advanced examples of post-national political integration, recent developments in the regime of human rights protection within the EU are discussed in this new light. In a final step, the transposition to the global level of the argument developed in the European case is assessed and the author flags issues for further research on what democratic theorists should hope for in the new global order.Keywords: democracy; human rights; legitimacy; citizens’ rights; Maus; right to have rights; Arendt; legal rights; international law; EU; global institutions; Habermas; Lafont. (shrink)

John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism – Assessment Sensitivity – provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: statements about the future that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and solves the puzzle, Assessment Sensitivity is ultimately self-refuting.

Classical logic counts sentences such as ‘Alice is identical with Alice’ as logically true. A standard objection to classical logic is that Alice’s self-identity, for instance, is not a matter of logic because the identity of particular objects is not a matter of logic. For this reason, many philosophers argue that classical logic is not the right logic, and that it should be abandoned in favour of free logic — logic free of existential commitments with respect to singular terms. In (...) most standard free logics, sentences such as ‘Alice is identical with Alice’ are not logically true. This paper argues that this objection from existential commitments is some- what superficial and that there is a deeper reason why ‘Alice is identical with Alice’ should not be considered a logical truth. Indeed, a key fundamental thought about the nature of logic is that a logical truth is true in virtue of its logical form. The fundamental problem I raise is that a sentence such as ‘Alice is identical with Alice’ appears to not even be true in virtue of its logical form. Thus this paper argues that given that such a sentence is not true in virtue of its logical form, it should not be counted as logically true. It moreover argues, on the same grounds, that even the sentences which free logicians regard as logically true shouldn’t be regarded as logically true. So in this sense free logic is no repair to classical logic. (shrink)

On Fred Dretske’s account of knowledge, the Epistemic Closure Principle for knowledge is not valid. Dretske takes this to be a virtue since the account is thus able to saves ordinary knowledge from skepticism. On it, you may know that you have hands, although you do not know that you are not a handless brain in a vat. As a correlate, the account also has to countenance the existence of what has come to be known as ‘abominable conjunctions’ – conjunctions (...) of the form ‘I know I have hands but I do not know that I am not a handless brain in a vat’. These conjunctions are abominable in that they look false or in some way incoherent. Dretske suggests that the abomination is merely pragmatic and can be explain in terms of conversational features, more precisely, in terms of the Gricean Conversation Principles and its associated Maxims of Conversation. I argue that no such Gricean explanation is forthcoming, and that the abomination cannot be thought of as a merely pragmatic or conversational phenomenon. As I show, the abomination goes deeper, into the semantics. (shrink)

This double issue of the Carrollian, the journal of the Lewis Carroll Society, is entirely devoted to Lewis Carroll's famous short paper published in the journal Mind in 1895 under the title ‘What...

Over the past twenty years, the concept of intermediality has emerged as a strategic response that has sought to bypass some of the ills that have plagued the university as an institution.1 Indeed, defined as the study of “nodes of relations, of relationship movements slow enough to seem immobile”, intermediality as an approach has helped fight against the hyper-specialization of research in the humanities. By conceiving of relationships as paramount, it has made it possible to view as counterintuitive the fragmented (...) approach to the real and its representations. Thereby, the social and cultural environment has been relocated to the center of analyses.. (shrink)

The chapter's concern is meta‐theoretical and pertains to the nature of human rights theory. Interestingly, most human rights theorists do not spend much time stating what their theory is a theory of, and hence what kind of theory it should be. The chapter argues in favour of taking the legal dimension of human rights more seriously and, more specifically, for a legal theory of human rights. Making human rights law the object of human rights theory has two advantages: one substantive (...) and the other methodological. First of all, it makes for a deeper understanding of the nature of human rights as a practice, and hence of many questions in human rights theory. A second benefit lies in the resources of legal theorizing, and in particular the latter's experience in explaining and evaluating normative practises. A related contribution of the proposed legal human rights theory is that it can bridge the gap that has grown within existing human rights theories between human rights practice and human rights standards, and so‐doing reconcile so‐called “political” and “ethical” human rights theories out of their sterile opposition. (shrink)

La neurothéologie est une nouvelle science interdisciplinaire émergente. Issue des progrès des neurosciences, elle s’intéresse au cerveau spirituel et religieux. Les travaux d’imagerie cérébrale et de neurobiologie sur lesquels elle s’appuie n’excluent en rien le dialogue avec les sciences humaines. Elle permet une distinction entre spiritualité et religion, la spiritualité apparaissant comme un besoin naturel et universel, alors que les religions sont vues comme une réponse culturelle à ce besoin naturel. Le dialogue entre la foi et la science se déploie (...) alors sous un jour nouveau, loin des clivages habituels. La neurothéologie n’est pas plus religieuse qu’irréligieuse, elle ouvre de nouvelles perspectives pour la modernité et la mondialisation. Le présent article part des prémisses acquises en addictologie, où une démarche interdisciplinaire a apporté des progrès sensibles dans le traitement des addictions. Les neurosciences de la spiritualité offrent ainsi une opportunité pour un débat entre médecine, philosophie et théologie. (shrink)

This article examines whether legal compromise on matters of justice amounts to a desirable response to the problem raised by reasonable pluralis.

In this reply the author argues that the three features of the global human rights practice identified in Kumm’s chapter are more ambivalent and therefore more difficult to account for in one single theory of human rights than the chapter seems to argue. Human rights are both limited in content and object as well as potentially unlimited in scope; they are at the same time prone and resistant to trade-offs; and they are both universal and local in justification. While it (...) is true that human rights are justificatory through and through, this is only one of their many specificities in terms of judicial reasoning, and it does not help much in understanding these three dual features of human rights. (shrink)